Collaboration in the Humanities

Not so long ago Darryl G Hart, noting that Pastor Wedgeworth and I often write together and when doing so use the first person plural pronoun, punned on this usage and on our surname initials and dubbed us “WE.” And WE couldn’t be more pleased with that tag. But it’s not just us; in our informal schola or circle of friends we actively collaborate with others, they with us, and they with each other. Sometimes, the collaboration is nearly that of the Wikipedia model, but much more usually it is one writer who consults others as readers and interlocutors in order to develop his ideas in lively conversation. In other words, it’s the kind of thing one sees acknowledged at the beginning of books, which is a fine thing and something to aim to cultivate even more earnestly than one commonly finds done in the academy. But formal co-authorship too is a practice we think very much worth cultivating. So do David O’Hara and John Kaag, writing at The Chronicle of Higher Education in an appropriately co-authored essay.